Nation's capital a city for all seasons

For most Canadians, Ottawa is worth visiting any time of year. Each season has its own special events and attractions.

We visited this May for the Canadian Tulip Festival. Nearly a million tulips bloom in a dazzling display every spring in Capital Region flower beds. After Canadian troops liberated the Netherlands during the Second World War, the Dutch sent 100,000 tulip bulbs to Canada as a gesture of gratitude, and continue to send 20,000 bulbs each year.

The nearly three-week festival also includes concerts and cabaret nights; an International Pavilion with food, entertainment and culture from around the world; and Celebridee: A Celebration of Ideas, featuring top international speakers engaging audiences in discussions of contemporary issues. This year's headline speaker was Salman Rushdie.

Summer brings outdoor exploring on foot, bicycle or boat, and a dizzying lineup of music festivals including jazz, folk, blues and chamber, attracting renowned performers from around the globe.

Fall presents a blaze of colour in the city's parks and surrounding countryside, and an array of harvest festivals and events. In winter, the city is lit by a glittering show of Christmas lights and the opportunity to glide along the Rideau Canal Skateway, the world's largest outdoor skating rink. In February, Winterlude is billed as North America's greatest celebration of all things snow and ice.

Ottawa contains enough cultural and historical treasures to keep a visitor busy for a very long time.

At the top of our list is Parliament Hill, with its magnificent gothic-revival buildings and manicured grounds. Because the place belongs to all Canadians, guided tours are free.

We're particularly impressed by the 132-year-old Library of Parliament, which has been called the most beautiful room in Canada. Featuring a 12-metre iron-dome ceiling, glass floors on the second and third levels to bring light to the lower stacks, and more than 1,600 hand-carved designs in the woodwork, it's the kind of place that would look entirely at home in a Harry Potter story.

After the guided tour, we take the elevator to the observation deck of the 92-metre Peace Tower, with its gorgeous views over city, river and countryside.

Next on our must-see list is the country's most-visited museum -- the Canadian Museum of Civilization, known for its flowing architecture, riverside setting, and dramatic open spaces showcasing 20,000 years of human history. Some 25,000 square metres of exhibition space over four storeys could easily provide days of exploration.

The Grand Hall houses contains what is said to be the largest indoor collection of totem poles in the world. It also contains a recreation of six First Nations villages moving up the B.C. coast from south to north, all made with West Coast materials by craftspeople from the bands represented.

Canada Hall gives us a short course in Canadian history over the past 1,000 years. On the upper floors, we tour the highly interactive children's museum and the postal museum. Admission is free.

We visit the Canadian War Museum -- an architectural gem whose use of recycled materials and energy-efficient technology reflects one of its main themes: "regeneration." In the Memorial Hall, a high, narrow, solitary window has been placed so that at precisely 11 a.m., each Nov. 11, the sun's rays will illuminate the only artifact in that room -- the headstone of Canada's Unknown Soldier.

Four galleries explore conflict in Canadian history, from First Nations wars to the current combat in Afghanistan. Of the museum's more than half-million artifacts, the largest are in the LeBreton Gallery: a collection of tanks, personnel carriers, and a Voodoo 101 jet fighter. One of the smaller vehicles brings us to an abrupt halt. A jeep used on an escort mission in Croatia is riddled with bullet holes, the result of an ambush that hit it with more than 50 rounds. The driver and passenger were each hit six times, but miraculously, both survived.

A short drive out of Ottawa takes us to an eerie Cold War relic, a bunker built secretly between 1959 and 1961 to house Canadian government and military officials in the event of a nuclear crisis, and nicknamed the Diefenbunker, after Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. Closed in 1994, it is now Canada's Cold War Museum and a national historic site. It's open to the public by guided tour.

The ByWard Market is one of Canada's oldest and largest public markets and Ottawa's premier entertainment district, filled with restaurants, clubs, pubs, coffee shops and boutiques. Established in 1826 by Colonel John By, builder of the Rideau Canal, the roughly four-square-block quarter was designed with wide streets for the market that also make it a gathering spot. It's open year-round but busiest in summer, when up to 175 outdoor stalls sell plants, flowers, fruits, vegetables, art and crafts.

Ottawa has an incredible network of biking and walking paths along the Rideau Canal, the Ottawa River, and through urban and rural landscapes. We rent bikes at a shop alongside the canal, and spend several hours exploring the city away from the jostling pedestrian and vehicle traffic of the roads above.

Returning the bikes, we take the stairs back to street level and into the lobby of the Fairmont Chateau Laurier. A stunning example of Old-World architecture in the heart of Ottawa, the Chateau is a National Historic Site, one of the grand old railway hotels that tell the story of how this huge country was connected by trains. Relaxing over afternoon tea in the lounge, we look at the list of places we'd like to see -- and realize that part of our planning will have to involve a return trip to Ottawa.

IF YOU GO:

For information on visiting Ottawa, including links to accommodation, attractions and activities, contact Ottawa Tourism online at www.ottawatourism.ca, or call toll-free: 1-800-363-4465.

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